As part of its Grumpy Editor series, LWN.net looks at graphical mail clients. KMail is titled the most configurable and flexible graphical email client. Criticism includes missing features which can be already found in KDE 3.3 Beta 1 like HTML composing and better usage of external spam filters. In summary it's found to be one of the best mail clients available.

Yes, KMail kicks butt, even in the current version on sid, which lacks good IMAP I still use it for that. Currently, I have issues like IMAP folders showing new mails in brackets, but not showing them in the actual message lists; filters not working for IMAP; and the slow speed of moving messages is a little worrisome, too.

I know most of the IMAP stuff has been re-written, and that it now supports filters. But I'm not sure whether sieve has to be installed on the server and seperately configured for KMail to use it. Does anyone know whether it'll all just work now?

Anyway, as I say, KMail rocks. I'd have to recommend it over anything else out there for desktop mail. Especially with how it integrates into Kontact with 3.2. Run KMail, run the full suite: it's your choice. And the way the KMail kicker icon minimises the whole of Kontact when you're using it. Gotta love those little touches that show off a good underlying design :)

I use the latest sid too. I get several comments about Kmail:
- It doesn't permit to set the Sent/Draft/ Folders and use it's default. Since i use IMAP, i will choose to save Sent in the IMAP Sent folder not the local filesystem one.
- I really don't understand why the default config, come a filesystem folder inbox and others .. think about people that dont use this kind of stuffs (IMAP again).
- The thread view isn't good as mutt ..
- And config can drive me crazy to find the right option
- Why i can't set my custom headers too display in message view (perhaps i need to display my Spam filtering headers)
- How could i set another browser than konqui ?
- Is there any plans to add the filter (subject etc etc) feature found in evolution or mozilla ? (in the main view)
- Any plans to support IMAP iddle ? (i don't test the CVS for a while)

Kmail is a my favorite mail reader. I really enjoy the 'transport / identity' feature which give a lot of power, and this is damm clear (compare to others). I think Kmail can be used by advanced users, need again some work to be an advanced mailer.

I don't have a way to do that, perhaps submit a wish/bug about the "Component Chooser" in control center to let people choose their own web browsers? Perhaps you could work out some hack with a shell script but thats not very nice.

- Is there any plans to add the filter (subject etc etc) feature found in evolution or mozilla ? (in the main view)

I'm not sure exactly what your asking here, but if your talking about IMAP filtering, KMail 1.5.9 (KDE 3.1 i think) support sieve. If your mail server doesnt support sieve, this is the bug your after:

... and I don't have plans to change it. I love how it evolves (funny, huh?!) and the few features I'm missing now seems to come with KDE 3.3.
I know more people that use it and they love the kontact integration, they love that they can *CHOSE* to run it as a full featured PIM suit or as a standard mail client, I love that too.
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Go KMail's dev, go! :D

First kmail crashed on me, when I tried to import the second Thunderbird Profile in a row (I had first renamed the imported folder). It might have been, because there was still an empty Mozilla file after the rename, or it might have been because there were too many mbox folders around.

Anyway, I removed the empty ~/Mail/Mozilla file and moved all the imported messages into the corresponding kmail Maildir folders. After that I didn't have any trouble importing the second thunderbird directory tree.

I tried KMail 3.2.1 and decided not to use it because it doesn't use mh mail folders. Instead, KMail wants to copy them into its own collection of folders. That means that I can't use both mh and KMail on the same collection of e-mail and expect changes I make with mh to be known to KMail and vice versa.